Esther Murbach grew up in Basel/Switzerland and lives in Basel and Galway. She studied languages, history and philosophy in Basel and Berlin. After working as a journalist and translator for many years, she is now a freelance author writing German and English. Her work contains four novels, one short story collection (bilingual) and one poetry collection (trilingual) published in Switzerland. A new bilingual collection of various texts, “Swiss Going on Irish”, was published in spring 2017. In Ireland, her work has appeared in The Galway Review, The Galway Review Printed Edition, The Galway Advertiser and Crannóg.

Before The Storms

Corrib’s mouth
breathes fog
moist muslin curtains
trembling in the early breeze
this September morning

Chilly …

Listen, Aran sweater
dozing in my drawer
steeped in scent of cedar wood
here is the wake-up call
for your next season!

No, wait …

A pale, veiled disc
rises over Long Walk
a pretence of sun
promising to turn
early autumn
into late summer
as it struggles up the sky

I might
after all
eat lunch on the lawn
a bite of sunlight
a swig of breeze
one last time
before the storms set in